Hammersmith & Fulham

Executive Summary of Ofsted Self-Evaluation – September 2020 Children’s Service Vision:

- to improve the lives and life chances of our children and young people

- intervene early to give them the best start in life and promote their wellbeing

- to ensure children and young people are protected from harm

- and ensure that all children have access to an excellent education that helps them achieve their potential

- all of this will be done whilst reducing costs and improving service effectiveness Socio-demographic and factual data

- There are 36,898 children under the age of 18 (20% of the total H&F population)

- 32% of all children are of an ethnic minority

- The average deprivation levels (expressed as an IDACI score and percentage) of children living in H&F for 2019 was 18.6%. This is a decrease from 26.7% in 2015 and makes H&F the 14th most deprived borough in London.

- 945 children and young people had been identified as needing specialist support from the local authority, at 31 March 2020.

- 141 (39 per 10,000 children) children and young people were the subject of a child protection plan

- 252 (68 per 10,000) children and young people were looked after by the local authority, an increase from 245 (66 per 10,000 children) at 31 March 2019.

- Since the last inspection, two serious incident notifications have been submitted to Ofsted and two rapid reviews have been completed, and we are currently completing two serious case reviews (commissioned prior to new arrangements).

- 93% of state funded schools in the borough are rated as good or outstanding. Hammersmith & Fulham Context

- Hammersmith and Fulham is an ambitious authority with the high level of support from the political leadership.

- Children's Services have a new DCS who joined in November 2019, and is leading an experienced management team.

- Children’s services is innovative and ambitious and is continually striving to improve our service delivery.

- We are proud to lead stable and robust services, with a strong focus on recruiting and retaining staff with a high skill level to deliver excellent services.

- Our well embedded Systemic Practice model helps to build effective relationships and contributes to achieving positive and sustained changes for families.

- We take pride in our focus on supporting our children and young people to achieve improved outcomes.

- Hammersmith and Fulham continues to strengthen the voice of children and young people in our decision making and service development processes.

- In May we formed Vulnerable Children’s Working Group in response to C19 to ensure that we worked closely with schools to track attendance and ensure robust oversight of all our vulnerable children during COVID-19. Shared Services

Shared services with Bi-Borough

- LSCP
- MASH
- Fostering & Permanence
- Missing Coordinator
- GMACE
- Emergency Duty Team (EDT)
- Centre for Systemic Social Work
- Children’s Placement Team

Shared Service with Ealing, Hounslow and Brent

- Adoption Service (since October 2019) Focus on Practice – service developments

- **Trailblazer Mental Health Support Teams** - H&F is part of both the first and second mental health trailblazer programmes. The first wave started in September 2019 and the second wave will start later this year. The programme complements existing mental health services and targeted at meeting low-to-moderate levels of need in schools including alternative provisions.

- **Transition and Resilience service** – successful bid by Family Support, funded by the Youth Endowment Fund. Aims to tackle youth violence by reducing school exclusions. It will do this by providing intense support to children and young people during key moments of transition and brain development.

- **Specialist Behaviour Service** - new multi-disciplinary behaviour support service to support children and young people with learning disabilities and autism who are at risk of tier 4 hospital admission or residential placement.

- **Oversight of complex and high risk cases** - a panel, with membership at assistant director level, that offer strategic oversight and operational direction to managing complex and high-risk cases that the existing frameworks and processes are proving ineffective in safeguarding and supporting the children and young people.

- **NHSE Keyworker pilot** - successful bid for a NHSE keyworker pilot. This will bring a new model of co-ordination across the NHS and LA Focus on Practice – service developments

- **Response to serious youth violence** - new Gangs Violence and Exploitation Unit became operational in August 2020. Joint Local Authority and Metropolitan Police initiative to focus on early intervention and diversion of young people who are at risk of involvement in serious youth violence.

- **Supporting Families Against Youth Crime (SFAYC)** - funded by MHCLG through successful bid. And commenced in October 2019. A Contextual Safeguarding Coordinator works with selected Voluntary and Community Sector partners to support children and young people at risk of or involved in offending and their families. As at 30/06/20, the project has worked with 55 children and young people, with reported significant reductions in involvement in crime. 78% reduction in reported crime among the engaged cohort in the first quarter.

- **Family Support Digital Service - COVID:**

  - Home learning activities and past virtual sessions
  - Alby TV and interactive Facebook sessions
  - Time to Connect and Overloaded toolbox for families
  - Building Resilience: Returning to School Programme: guidance and training to help prepare schools and staff post lockdown
  - Counselling and educational materials for home-schooling to support families no longer able to access Children’s Centres Corporate Parenting and Participation

- Development of Corporate Parenting Board and Steering Group

  - Agenda led by young people
  - Well supported by political senior leaders & other LA departments.
  - You said we did informing practice changes

- Youth take over challenge day

  - Biggest Youth Take Over Challenge – *With Me 4 Me* – event in November 2019.
  - 120 children from diverse backgrounds including those in care, care leavers, children in need and those not involved with service

- Children’s Advocate – advocates for looked after children and children subject to child protection plan.

- Participation officer

  - Coordinates CiCC & Care Leavers Group; consultation activities; drop in/group sessions (health and wellbeing, cooking, quiz nights, trips to the zoo etc); achievement event.
  - Gary Lineker event; care leaver apprenticeship at Otto’s
  - Activities continued virtually during COVID – lockdown survey
  - Virtual achievement event in July – 78 awards for children & young people

- Restoration lead – consultation and engagement for children & young people involved with YOS

- LSCP engagement officer – recruiting young safeguarding scrutineers

Hammersmith & Fulham Council Children looked after and care leavers virtual awards 2020

- The Corporate Parenting Board held a virtual version of our highly successful achievement and celebration event for children looked after and care leavers on 29th July 2020.
- Seventy-eight of our children and young people were nominated for their fabulous achievements across seven categories: significant contribution, young leader, education, young artist, making a difference, overcoming adversity, and achievement in sports.
- We had an incredible 98 people on the Microsoft Teams event with staff, carers and young people joining in. The evening included individual awards for 78 young people, videos from members of the Children in Care Council sharing their achievements, a beautiful song written and performed by one of our young people, and some of the amazing submissions from the creative challenge. Focus on outcomes

Children needing help and protection

- Timeliness of assessments increased from 75.5% at the end of March 2020 to 94% YTD.
- Re-referrals YTD is 18% - this is lower than the SN and national average of 19.0% and 23.0% respectively.
- ICPCs timeliness of 86% - higher than the SN and inner London average at 74.0% and 76.0% respectively.
- There is good engagement between Family Support, statutory social care and partners agencies with 20% of cases jointly allocated with social care.

Looked After Children:

- At the end of August 2020, 8.3% children and young people had three or more placements. This represents strong performance as London and national average stands at 10% and 10.4% respectively.
- 40% of our children looked after achieving grade 4 or above in English and Mathematics GCSE this year, with 25% achieving grade 5 and above (compared to 7.2 nationally in 2019).
- In 2019/2020 we had 3 adoptions, 22 SGOs and 4 CAOs.
- No permanent exclusions. Fixed term exclusions reduced from 21 to 11 children.

Care Leavers:

- Provision of high quality accommodation to support care leavers to live independently
- 60% are EET
- 94% are in suitable accommodation
- We are in touch with all care leavers except with those who are long term missing
- 32 are attending university Operating context

High CLA rate Historically high rate of CLA. 242 (66 per 10,000) CLA as at 31/08/20. A decrease from 252 (68 per 10,000) in March 2020.

Increasing rate of CPP 180 children subject to a child protection plan as at 31/08/20. An increase of 27.7% since March 2020. Key learning– areas of development

Adolescent and edge of care

- To provide timely and effective support to children at risk of coming into care and families finding it hard to manage adolescent behaviours
- A workstream has started and is pulling together all services for adolescents in order to design a more effective offer for adolescents

Permanence planning and oversight

- To improve timeliness and oversight of permanence planning
- The terms of reference for the Permanency Tracker Panel and Permanence Board have been updated to track, monitor and respond to likely delays earlier in the journey of the child

Independent living skills training and transitions

- To ensure that young people can move and live successful adult lives
- A workstream has been launched to review the existing offer and develop a more holistic independent living skills programme

Disproportionality

- We have high rates of children from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic groups in our children looked after and youth offending cohorts
- We have started pulling together data and responses from services, including multiagency partners, to understand why this is so and agree a workable intervention plan

Business intelligence

- To ensure we have full suite of performance report for strategic and operational managers to understand and improve services for children and families
- A business intelligence activity plan and timetable has been implemented with operational oversight from the Mosaic Board and senior oversight from the steering group and Statutory Accountabilities Board Ofsted recommendation 1

Availability of robust performance data

We have committed a significant investment of resources enabling us to provide access to a wider range of reliable data and live tools, and to strengthen our performance framework.

Delivery Milestone

- A specialist children’s social care BI lead and data analyst have brought in sector expertise to enhance the pace of development of a full suite of high-quality performance reports
- We have invested in the roles of Assistant Director for Performance and Improvement and Head of Performance and Improvement to enhance the pace and commitment, and to embed a stronger performance culture
- We have developed a much stronger collaboration with the BI and Mosaic teams to jointly own the improvement work which is overseen by a steering group of senior officers
- A new performance management framework has been in place since December 2020
- Data now available includes weekly performance summaries, a monthly performance report, a Covid-19 and vulnerable children dataset and a developing suite of live dashboards
- Managers are supported to use the new tools and held to account for their team’s performance at monthly practice boards
- An ambitious timeline has been agreed for completion of the full performance suite by April 21—Appendix 4. The work is supported by the Mosaic Board and overseen by the Performance Management Board, chaired by the DCS

Impact

- Availability and access to performance reports are leading to a better understanding and responses from managers including improvements in the timeliness of visits, assessments and supervision
- Live performance dashboards accessible to team managers
- Improved intelligence is supporting better understanding and strategic planning Ofsted recommendation 2

Case recording, including supervision records and robust recording of the management of allegations

Delivery Milestone

- Weekly Mosaic training and surgeries are being delivered to social workers and a Mosaic Change Board involving heads of service and the Mosaic team is taking place
- Changes have been made to Mosaic steps and quick reference practice guides produced on specific areas of work
- A new manual recording system and an action plan for the management of allegations has been implemented. A plan to develop a case management system on Mosaic is underway
- Oversight has been strengthened by Independent Reviewing Officers (IROs) through mid-point reviews, IRO conflict resolution/escalation protocol and a Mosaic recording step

Impact

- Performance reports show sustained improvements in timeliness of assessments, supervision and visits

- Practice week audit in February 2020 showed improvements in case recording, updated chronologies, the timeliness of supervision and management oversight.

- Supervision audits reported improvements in the timeliness of supervision and management oversight Ofsted recommendation 3 Capacity within the early help and contact and assessment services

- Family Support (early help) capacity was reviewed in January 2020 and capacity increased by 17%. We are currently reviewing the Family Support offer because of budgetary constraints. This will impact on staffing levels but ensure better interface with social care and a focus on vulnerable families.

- New centralised allocations and workload management systems in Family Support commenced in March 2020.

- An external audit of Family Support was completed in February 2020. The review highlighted positive practices and recommended areas for improvement. An action plan is in place.

- A Social Care caseload benchmarking and workload management system is currently in development.

- Family Support has recruited a senior Business Intelligence lead to help the service better understand the families they are working with and to target the right families. This work will improve the interface between the Family Support and Family Services and help us to better understand the impact of our early help service.

Impact

- Timely responses to families with many cases resolved without needing allocation.
- New centralised allocation system leading to effective and coordinated responses.
- Workload management ensures timely and proportionate allocation of cases.
- Timely and improved performance reporting is enabling managers to track allocations and capacity and allowing flexibility when needed. This has ensured that social workers have manageable caseloads and assessment timeliness significantly improved.

Hammersmith & Fulham Council Ofsted recommendation 4 Consistency of multi-agency information sharing and participation at strategy discussions

Delivery Milestone

- Work has taken place at Safeguarding Partnership meetings to increase participation at strategy discussions
- Participation is discussed quarterly at Safeguarding Partnership Meetings and with CCG and Police leads
- A thematic audit of strategy discussion and section 47s has been completed and learning shared. The September 2020 Practice Week will dip sample strategy discussions and section 47s to assess their quality
- A one-minute guide on section 47s has been developed

Impact

- Participation/attendance at strategy discussions/meetings by health & Police has significantly improved, enhanced by the switch to virtual meetings since COVID-19
- Virtual strategy discussions/meetings are being established as part of our practice model Ofsted recommendation 5 The quality of planning for children in need

Delivery Milestone

- This is an area where we still have insufficient data and, as a result, our oversight of practice is not as strong as we would want. We have therefore commissioned an external auditor to review CIN work and thresholds. This work started in September 2020, after a delay due to the COVID-19 lockdown
- The BI team is developing reporting capability for CIN plans and reviews.
- Good quality examples of CIN plans are shared with social workers
- Team managers are routinely checking quality, outcomes and duration of CIN at supervision
- The Vulnerable Children’s working group, in response to COVID-19, RAG rated all cases, including children in need. The RAG ratings are subject to regular reviews

Impact

- Increased oversight by team managers

- Improved CIN plans Learning and Improvement Framework. How we know about our performance?

- **Performance Management Framework**

  - Performance Management Board - It scrutinises high level business and performance reports and identifies key lines of enquiries for further interrogation and reporting.
  - Improvement Board – It brings challenge and rigour to the improvement process and provides assurance and monitoring of improvement activities.
  - Practice Forum – focuses on in-depth interrogation of performance by service area.
  - Performance and Quality Forum brings together all managers including Independent Reviewing Officers (IROs) and Child Protection Advisers (CPAs) to review key performance, themes from audits and to share learning.
  - Learning and Improvement Workshops bring together social workers and managers to consider key performance, themes from audits and reviews, and the resultant learning.
  - External audits and reviews – CIN reviews, high risk cases review, family support audit.

- **Engagement of children and families** – Practice Week, Customer Care month, FS Trustpilot

- **Complaints and compliments** – delay in annual reporting

- **External audits/reviews** – Family Support, Complex & high risk cases (September 2020).

- **Serious case/child safeguarding reviews**

- **Governance and accountability arrangements** - Cabinet Member Briefings, Statutory Accountability Board, Local Children Safeguarding Partnership, Corporate Parenting Board, Bi-monthly Children and Education Policy and Accountability Committee (CEPAC) Learning and Improvement Framework. How we know about our performance?

Audit Framework

➢ Practice Week It had shown that social workers and practitioners know their cases well, appropriately assessing need and risk. The voice of the child and their lived experience were evident in 85% of cases Good management guidance was reported in 95% of cases

➢ Mental Health Audit Social workers have good knowledge of children’ need and advocated on their behalf, Good care arrangements and input from carers advocated, evidence of effective multi agency work

➢ Supervision Audit showed improvements in case recording, updated chronologies, the timeliness of supervision and management oversight

➢ COVID Audit Framework A range of audit activities were carried out from April 2020 to provide assurance that safeguarding practice was robust during the COVID lockdown

➢ Effectiveness of Child Protection Plans Thresholds were found to be appropriately applied during this period in respect of ICPCs. Risk assessments were completed, and RAG rating updated following each visit. The Quality Assurance function had been strengthened with Child Protection Advisors conducting mid-point monitoring on child protection plans Learning and Improvement Framework. How we know about our performance?

➢ Child Protection Visits Visits audited during lockdown were of good quality and those that were conducted virtually were found to be insightful and addressed risks. There was positive engagement with the families. Social workers engaged with children and families in a range of innovative ways such as a fitness session and a video CV writing session with a hard to reach young person. Good co-working and joint visits were undertaken with partner agencies including the Violence Intervention Project (VIP) and with CaMHS.

➢ Repeat Child Protection Plans In all the cases a repeat CPP decision was appropriate at the time however in some cases more could have done either before or after step down of the preceding CPP; responses could have been sharper when concerns started to re-emerge after step-down/closure; or other planning frameworks could have been considered.

➢ Missing Children There was a co-ordinated response based on the local COVID missing list and the MASH list compiled by the Missing Child Co-ordinator. The Missing Child Co-Ordinator reported an improvement in the recording of missing episodes in terms of accuracy and stronger management oversight, especially in the Looked After Children service. Cross-borough work was facilitated by the Missing Child Co-ordinator and there was strong examples of cross borough strategy meetings and mapping work. There was evidence of good quality Return Home Interviews. Governance and accountability arrangements

The council maintains a high support, high challenge and high expectations culture that combines being compassionate and financially ruthless. This culture runs through the council’s leadership, governance and oversight arrangements, including:

- **Cabinet Member Briefing**, where the Lead Member for children and education meets with the Director of Children Services and Assistant Directors fortnightly to discuss strategic issues and interrogate performance.
- **Statutory Accountability Board**, where directors and chief officers have sight of key reports and performance to interrogate and understand performance in relation to children and families and recommend next steps.
- **Local Children Safeguarding Partnership**. This remains a Tri-borough partnership arrangement. An independent review, which includes consideration of a move to a sovereign arrangement, is taking place with a report due imminently.
- **Corporate Parenting Board** quarterly forum where the Lead Member, councillors, senior leaders and children in care council meet to question and review practice and outcomes for children looked after and care leavers and agree areas for further development. The Board has met virtually during the COVID-19 lockdown.
- **Bi-monthly Children and Education Policy and Accountability Committee (CEPAC)** where councillors and residents scrutinise performance and hold senior managers to account and develop policy recommendations to improve our services.